M. Hoops | Four games in, a patient Gaines hits his stride

Penn was heading in a downward spiral. The Quakers had just gone 0-3, putting up 65 points against a Howard team that surrendered 110.5 points per game in its first two.

But with the pressure on, freshman point guard Harrison Gaines responded like a grizzled veteran.

"I just want to have patience and let the game come to me," Gaines said. "I knew eventually it would click in where I'd have a good game, and tonight was the night. So patience was a big thing for me."

Starting his third straight game, Gaines did more than just click. He put up 12 assists, just one shy of Penn's all-time record (Tim Begley and Dave Wohl's 13).

By the second half of Game Four, Gaines began to understand that he doesn't need to play out of his element.

"I hit the first three and then I missed the next two, coach sat me out and I realized [I had to] get back to running the team," Gaines said. "I felt like Reggie Bush in that [Adidas] 'Impossible is Nothing' commercial. The monkey's been on my back since I hadn't been playing well, and tonight was a good night to get things started."

Freshmen Tyler Bernardini (22 minutes), Jack Eggleston (33 minutes) and Gaines (22 minutes) all were much more comfortable in Penn's first win.

"Today we played a little freer," Quakers coach Glen Miller said.

Once Gaines settled down into his role, he hit cutter after cutter and did a good job feeding the post.

The Citadel played a good amount of zone defense in the first half, but the Quakers shot them out of it. The ball movement on offense was crisper than in any other game, and as a result the team hit 58 percent from the field.

"Any time you have 16, 18 - never mind 30 assists - that doesn't just happen by accident," Miller said. "Our ball movement [in the halfcourt] was a little bit slow, and that's what I was getting on Harrison for. We picked up our ball movement in the halfcourt [in the second half] and we were very good in transition."

But when Brian Grandieri (20 points) Mike Kach (19) or Bernardini (18) weren't scoring, Gaines found a way to get to the basket.

After that first-half three, he sliced through the Bulldogs' defense for three tough layups in the second half.

"He did a nice job, especially, I thought, defensively," The Citadel head coach Ed Conroy said. "He made our guys, [Cameron] Wells and [Zach] Urbanus work for all of their stuff.

"[But he also] did a super job of distributing the ball when he got into the heart of our defense. Penn did a nice job of cutting through our zone and posting guys up and he did a super job of finding them," he said.

Now that his team has a victory under its belt, the pressure has lightened a bit on the Quakers' starting point guard.

Not that it ever mattered, though.

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